


I still love her

by pcworth



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-08-09 08:26:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16446320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pcworth/pseuds/pcworth
Summary: Maggie wakes up in a hospital only to learn that it's not 2017 like she thought and she isn't in National City, she's in Gotham. The moment she woke all she wanted was to see Alex but when she begins to learn the truth of what happened it causes her to question everything - even her own sanity.





	1. Chapter 1

Maggie opened her eyes, but it still took a couple of moments before her brain registered where she was at – a hospital. She started to search her brain for an answer as to why she was there, but nothing was coming. The last thing she remembered was the aftermath of her and Alex’s engagement party and how she had spoken to her father probably for the last time.

Her head hurt and she lifted her left hand up to it, but paused as she noticed her engagement ring wasn’t on her finger. They probably had to take it off for whatever reason that she was in here, she thought. They probably gave it to Alex to hold on to.

I wonder where Alex is at, she thought.

Moving to call a nurse, she felt multiple sore spots all over her body. Once she hit the call button she adjusted the bed as well so she was sitting more upright.

“Well look who is awake,” an older nurse said as she walked in.  “How are you feeling?”

“I’d be feeling a lot better if I could remember why I ended up here.”

“You don’t remember?” she asked, stopping as she had been checking Maggie’s vitals.

“No,” Maggie said. “You care to fill me in?”

“I think I should let the doctor explain,” she said. “He will want to know about the memory loss.”

“Okay,” Maggie said. “Can you at least tell me if my fiancée is here somewhere?”

“No, I just came on shift though. I do know your partner was here and just stepped out to get something to eat in the cafeteria I believe.”

Good Maggie thought, he would tell her what the hell was going on.

“Speaking of eating,” the nurse said. “Once the doctor sees you, I’m sure you will want to get something to eat. Here is the menu. You just use the phone there to order it and someone will bring it up.”

She handed it over but Maggie wasn’t even listening to the last part of what she said. Instead she was staring at the front cover of the menu– it said Gotham General. She wasn’t in National City – but why?

“This is Gotham General?” Maggie asked.

“Yes.”

Maggie wanted to know why she was in Gotham but she didn’t expect the nurse could tell her. She was going to have to wait until her partner or Alex got here. God, she thought, Alex was probably worried out of her mind if she had been here long. Although right now, the thought of being at home and letting Alex take care of her sounded like a good idea to her.

“How long before I can see the doctor?” she asked.

“It shouldn’t be long,” the nurse said. “Can I get you anything?”

She wanted to say Alex, but she didn’t figure the woman would be helpful with that. Still, she wondered if Alex was ok because it seemed it was odd that she wasn’t here. Even though it was odd that she was in Gotham too.

“No,” she said. “I mean, was I brought in alone, was anyone else hurt?”

“As far as I know it was just you detective,” the nurse said. “If you need anything, just hit your call button.”

The nurse left and Maggie felt a little relief that whatever happened to her probably had just happened to her. She had so many questions though and she needed answers quick.  She must have been here a while at least or else she expected Alex would never have left the room.

She was searching mind for any clue as to why she would be here, but everything was a complete blank. Looking around for her phone, she didn’t even see it – again maybe Alex had it.

“Hey, you’re awake,” a man said entering the room with a smile. “About time too, getting tired of being here. You so owe me for this one Maggie.”

Maggie looked at the man, who clearly seemed to know her, but she had no idea who he was. He appeared to be a bit younger than her – maybe five years, at least he looked younger. He had an almost boyish appearance.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But who are you?”

He laughed, “Good one, but if you think you can fake memory loss to keep from filling your part of the report, you can forget it,” he said. “You’re already on the captain’s shit list as it is.”

“No, really,” she said, feeling increasingly nervous. “Who are you or who is it that you think I am?”

This time he looked at her more seriously as if deciding that maybe she wasn’t joking around. “Maggie, it’s me, Jackson, your partner,” he said, and he fished a badge out of his pocket to show her. He was now standing close enough to the bed that she could read it – it wasn’t just a badge, it was a detective’s shield for the Gotham Police Department. “Did that blow to the head mess you up that much that you won’t remember me?”

Maggie hit the call nurse button instead of responding. The same nurse appeared. “The doctor, I need to see him now.”

“Is something wrong?” the nurse asked.

“I need to get out of here,” she said. “I need Alex, where’s Alex?”

“Calm down Ms. Sawyer,” the nurse said. “I will get the doctor for you.”

She left the room quickly and Maggie looked at Jackson who had taken a step away from her and had an expression on his face that Maggie couldn’t interpret.

“If you are my partner,” she said. “Tell me where Alex is at?”

“Maggie, you …. Maybe you should just wait until the doctor gets in here.”

“Where is Alex? Did something happen to her?”

Maggie honestly thought this guy was going to get sick because he suddenly seemed very pale, which only made her worry more. None of this was making any sense and she needed Alex to be here to explain to her what the hell was going on.

“Maggie,” Jackson said. “What year do you think it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just tell me what year it is.”

“It’s 2017 and someone better start telling me what has happened, how I got here and where my fiancée is,” she said, getting angry at him and this whole situation. In fact, she was about ready to say screw all of this, get out of bed and find Alex on her own if she had to, but Jackson’s next words stopped her cold.

“It’s 2019 Maggie,” he said. “Not 2017. You were still in National City back then, but this is Gotham.”

“What? 2019. It can’t be,” she said more to herself to him. Two years – how could she not remember two years. Her eyes again went to her left hand and the missing engagement ring. If had been two years then why wasn’t there a wedding ring on it. Examining the finger more closely it didn’t look like there had been a ring on it for a while now. Looking up him, she asked again, “where’s Alex?”

“I think we should let the doctor check you out first because clearly that head injury was worse than we thought,” he said.

“If you are really my partner,” she said. “Then you tell me right now, where is Alex?”

“I really think we should wait and speak with the doctor.”

This time Maggie did start getting out of the bed. “What are you doing?” Jackson asked.

“If you aren’t going to help me I’m going to get the answers myself,” she said.

“Come on, you can’t go anywhere, you don’t even know what year it is,” he said. “I’m sorry this happened to you, but …” He paused and shook his head a bit. “You moved to Gotham after you and Alex broke up. You’re telling me you don’t remember any of this?”

Broke up. She and Alex had broken up, but why she wanted to ask and why would it cause her to move to Gotham. They were going to be married how could they have broken up. The shock of hearing this made her completely unaware of the doctor and nurse returning even as the doctor asked her something, but she didn’t respond, her mind still trapped on what Jackson said. She didn’t even notice as Jackson approached the doctor and quickly told him that Maggie thought it was 2017.

“Ms. Sawyer, I’m Dr. Callahan,” the doctor said approaching the bed. “I understand you’re having difficulties remembering some things. Well, I assure we’re going to run every test we can to try and find out why.”

She laid back down, not sure if she even wanted to remember now. Alex, she thought, how could they have ended. She was supposed to be her wife. They were going to do a lifetime of firsts.

“Ms. Sawyer,” the doctor said again when she didn’t respond. “Are you ok?”

“No,” she responded.


	2. Chapter 2

Maggie flipped through the channels on the television, not really interested in watching anything. In the two days she had been in the hospital since waking up, she already could see small changes in things from watching TV – shows that didn’t exist in 2017, but also similarities -- the same 24-hour news cycle where everything was a mini crisis and the same never ending war on crime that Gotham seemed to be perpetually trapped in.

They had given her every battery of test imaginable it seemed and there was no cause they could pinpoint for the memory loss. Yes, she had apparently hit her head during some raid she and Jackson were a part of that ended in a warehouse explosion that had caused her injuries when the blast knocked her against a nearby building.

Jackson had been there every day and sat with her for hours, filling in some blanks for her such as this raid they were on. GCPD didn’t have a Science Division like National City did but there had been an increase in alien activity in the city which was why Maggie had been hired there, Jackson told her. He had been assigned as her partner and while they weren’t officially a science squad, they had been tasked with investigating crimes tied to alien activity which mostly had been tracking down a smuggling ring of alien tech that had popped up. They had been making progress too, which is what had led them to the warehouse, but whoever was running it must have been tipped off and destroyed the place before they could even enter it.

The doctors had cautioned her about asking too many questions and Jackson was warned about providing too much information – something both of them had mutually agreed to ignore, although they mostly stuck to safer topics such as work. Maggie had to admit, she did kind of like this guy.

She hadn’t asked him anything else about Alex since finding out they broke up and part of her wondered if that was something she even really wanted to know about. The not knowing was driving her crazy, but to actually know what happened would somehow make all of this seem more real to her. Because right now this didn’t feel real to her.

Later today she was supposed to meet with a psychologist as the memory loss could be trauma based they said, and she certainly wasn’t looking forward to that. But if she wanted them to release her, it appeared that was one of the hoops she would have to jump through.

Another thing that was sort of weirding her out was that Jackson was the only one who had visited her. No one else apparently was concerned that she was in the hospital. She had made a passing comment to Jackson about it but he just shrugged it off saying that word about her memory loss had spread quickly at the precinct and no one had wanted to bother her since she couldn’t remember her time there.

It didn’t escape her notice that he was only talking about co-workers. If she had been dating someone – and she hoped she hadn’t – that person hadn’t showed up to see how she was doing.

Her mind was going in a hundred different directions that she almost didn’t catch the Supergirl reference on the television. She flipped back to the channel she had just passed and turned the volume up.

“As you can see behind me, the destruction left over from Superman’s battle with his cousin Supergirl, has still not been entirely dealt with,” the news anchor was saying. “The rebuilding of many of the structures that were damaged in the epic fight continues three months after Supergirl’s defeat.”

File footage from that day was being shown and Maggie couldn’t believe it as she saw the two Kryptonians fighting – going blow for blow at each other.

“It’s still not known where Superman took his cousin following her capture, although many have conjectured that he either banned her from the Earth or she is being held in a secret prison somewhere,” the anchor continued. “The former Girl of Steel who was once cheered on in this city is now reviled for the heavy-handed ways in which she decided to enforce laws, including becoming judge, jury and executioner.”

The broadcast switched to another topic but Maggie was reeling from what she had just seen. What had happened? What had Kara done? She wished again that she had at least had her phone – Jackson said it was damaged in the explosion but he was working on getting her another department issued one – so that she could at least use it to figure out the things she had missed. Seeing that broadcast, she knew the things she couldn’t remember must be worse than she could imagine.

Again, she wondered where was Alex? There was no way Alex would let her sister go on some vigilante justice spree.  Nor would J’onn and the rest of the DEO, so what happened?

Reaching for the hospital phone, she didn’t even think through the consequences of what she was doing as she dialed Alex’s number. It rang and rang but instead of hearing Alex’s message, it said that her voicemail was full and Maggie wouldn’t be able to leave a message.

Jackson had written his number down for her, so she dialed it. He at least answered.

“Have you got me a phone yet?” she asked as soon as he answered.

“Not yet,” he said. “Still working on it.”

“Well, can you go to my place and bring me my laptop or something – anything that I can use to …”

“To what?” he interrupted.

“I’m missing nearly two years of my life, what do you think I want it for?”

“Maggie, I know you want answers to things, but I don’t think that you should just dive right into all of that,” he said. “At least talk to the psychologist first. Isn’t your appointment in a couple of hours?”

She really wanted to yell at him, but she could tell he was just looking out for her.

“Fine,” she said. “I will speak with the psychologist first but then I’m checking myself out of here and you can either help me by getting me damn phone or stay out of my way.”

There was a slight pause. “I’ll get you a phone,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said before hanging up. Now she just had to get through this psychologist appointment.

…

“Maggie, if you want me to sign off on your release from the hospital, I need you to start talking more,” Dr. Smallwood said. Maggie had been sitting in her office for 22 minutes – she knew because she kept looking at the clock behind the doctor’s head.

So far, she had listened to a lot doctor speak about memory and trauma and had answered some questions, mostly with yes or no or ‘I don’t know.’

But when Smallwood asked her what was the last thing she remembered from 2017, Maggie hadn’t answered. She didn’t want to say that the last thing she remembered was her confronting her father, knowing he would never accept her or the life she wanted to build with Alex. She didn’t want to say that the last moment she could remember was being held by Alex and feeling like she was the luckiest woman in the world to have found someone who loved and accepted her for all the parts of her like Alex did.

“You can’t actually stop me if I sign myself out,” Maggie responded.

“I can however keep you from returning active duty.”

She wasn’t incorrect there, as one of the first things she had said to Maggie was that in addition to being on staff at the hospital, she was also contracted with the GCPD to handle evaluations when it came to officers being on leave of which Maggie currently was due to the explosion.

Maggie sighed and launched into what she remembered from that day, trying to keep it as succinct as possible.

“So, when I woke up, I thought I was in National City and I thought I was engaged, two things that apparently aren’t true,” Maggie said.

“Why do you think you and Alex broke up?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie said sternly, hoping that she would get the hint that it wasn’t a topic for discussion. Hell, it was about all Maggie had thought about but she couldn’t come up with a reason unless the fault lied with her. Her history with relationships wasn’t the greatest and she wondered if she had messed it up in some way. She wasn’t the same person she was when she cheated either so she didn’t believe it could be anything like that.

There was a knock on the door and Dr. Smallwood told the person to come in. Maggie looked behind her and saw Jackson and immediately looked back at the doctor.

“Since your partner here has been the only one you have had contact with outside of the hospital staff, I thought that it would be best if I brought him in for this next part,” Dr. Smallwood said. “Jackson told me some things in confidence about your desire to learn about the things you can’t remember.”

“Sorry partner,” he said taking a seat beside her. “But I know you’re going to start asking questions and I wasn’t really sure how to answer some of them.”

“We want to make this a safe space for you Maggie,” the doctor said. “Because there are some aspects of your life as it pertains to Alex that Jackson has filled me in on and I think it might be best if we talk about them in here as opposed to you discovering them on your own.”

“What kinds of things?” Maggie asked, but she wasn’t looking at the doctor, she was looking at Jackson.

Jackson looked to the doctor who nodded her head. “When you first transferred here to Gotham and we were assigned as partners, you didn’t want to talk much about National City. I saw your record there so I knew it must not be anything professional, then a few months in you finally told me about Alex – about how you met, and her coming out and everything.”

“You know why we broke up?”

“Yes,” he said. “It was because she wanted children some day and you didn’t, and neither of you were going to back down from your position. Alex was the one who ended it.”

Maggie looked away from him, staring out the window. Children. Alex had wanted children. And Maggie, well, she didn’t. How could she? Especially with what happened with her own childhood. Especially after how things ended with her dad.

Quickly getting out of her seat, Maggie felt like she couldn’t breathe. She wanted to cry and throw something at the same time.

“Maggie, it’s ok to feel whatever you are feeling right now,” Dr. Smallwood said.

Maggie wanted to laugh at her for even saying something as absurd as that. She loved Alex, she still loved Alex. In her mind atleast it had been 2017 just a couple of days ago. She wanted that time back, but now …

Calming herself, she took her seat once more but she didn’t say anything. No wonder Alex hadn’t answered the phone – not that she would have known it was Maggie calling but if Alex saw it was a Gotham number she must have suspected it was. Of course, that was assuming that Alex knew she was in Gotham. Maybe Alex didn’t care where she was. Maybe Alex had already found someone that could give her the things she wanted.

“Just let us know when you want to continue,” the doctor said after several minutes had passed. The way she phrased it, caused Maggie to make eye contact with her once more.

“Continue? I don’t … I don’t want to talk about that, I need time …”

“Of course, you do, and I’m not here to pressure you into talking about it right now. I think it’s telling that you woke up and have essentially erased two years of your life from your mind from the point right before you and Alex broke up,” she said. “But my concern now is that when you leave this hospital that you have certain pieces of information now rather than you finding out by searching the web.”

“What are you concerned I’m going to find out?”

Again, Smallwood looked to Jackson but he didn’t say anything immediately.

“What is it?” Maggie asked.

“You um, you only told me about Alex after she, after she died.”

If Maggie thought her heart was already breaking, she was sure of it now. Alex was dead. She clapped her hand over her mouth, stifling the sounds she wanted to be making, even as she felt the tears start.  

“How?” she managed.

“It was a hit and run crash.”

Maggie buried her head in her hands. Suddenly, she looked up, remembering that news broadcast and how she had wondered how Alex wouldn’t have let Kara turn vigilante. She would never have allowed that, but Alex wasn’t there to stop it.

Had Kara in her grief gone crazy?


	3. Chapter 3

Once Maggie was released from the hospital, Jackson drove her home which was a good thing since she had no idea where she lived. Jackson had brought her a new phone and she had gotten her personal items like her badge and keys from the hospital.

“Do you want me to come up or something?” Jackson asked after parking the car.

“No,” Maggie said. “But thanks.”

“Sure,” he said.

Still, she paused looking up at the apartment building that she apparently lived in – alone.

“I will drop Gertrude off tomorrow,” Jackson said.

That was another bit of news he had for her, that she had apparently gotten a dog from the humane society and named it Gertrude. It of course made her think about Alex, just like everything else did.

Maggie just nodded and finally moved to get out of the car. With each step she felt more and more unsure. None of this even felt familiar. Shouldn’t something feel familiar, she thought. She thought about Alex being stuck in that tank as the water was rising and how she had urged Alex to hold on until she could get there because they had so many firsts she wanted them to do together.

But they hadn’t done those things.

Giving a small nod to Jackson as she reached the entrance – as he had made no move to actually leave until she entered the building. According to the number on her key she lived in the fourth floor, so she took the elevator up. Once she reached the floor, she began looking for her place, finding it just three doors down.

She paused, looking down at the key in her hand and wondering what to expect when she walked into it. Her thoughts went back to Alex’s apartment – their apartment. There’s no reason to postpone the inevitable she thought as she put the key in the door and unlocked it. The immediate thing that struck her was how empty it was – not that there wasn’t furniture or anything, it was more like the feel of emptiness.

“Home sweet home,” she said as she shut and locked the door behind her.

The first thing she did was walk around the place – opening closets, drawers and even turning on the TV to see what channel she last watched. There were familiar things in the apartment – a couple of bonsai trees; although not the ones she had at her place in National City, clothes she recognized and some she didn’t. Still, nothing was sparking any type of memory of ever being here.

She saw where Gertrude’s area for food and water was. There was a small chew toy for her sitting next to the couch. A dog – she had gotten a dog and named it Gertrude even after what happened. Why?

Everything about her life now was a question.

And she didn’t know where to begin to get the answers. But she knew the one she didn’t want to know but needed to know.

Her laptop was sitting on the coffee table, so she pulled it toward her and booted it up. She was surprised when it didn’t ask her for her password. She always kept her devices password protected so the thought she had turned that function off was a little disturbing to her.

Opening the browser, she paused on the Google news home page, wondering if she was truly ready for this. Finally, she typed in the words – Alexandra Danvers National City.

She clicked on the first news article in the listing.

**Investigation ongoing in fatal hit and run**

**National City – Police are investigating the fatal hit and run crash that occurred at the intersection of Sullivan Road and 37 th Street on early Sunday morning.**

**The victim has been identified as Alexandra Danvers, 32, of National City.**

**The crash occurred at about 3:17 a.m. Danvers was traveling east bound on a Ducati motorcycle when according to police, a witness reported a dark-colored car run through the red light at the intersection and slammed into the motorcycle. The car, which has not been identified, left the scene immediately.**

**Paramedics transported Ms. Danvers to National City Hospital where she later died.**

**The authorities said they have no other information to release at this time.**

Maggie had read plenty of news articles in her time and the lack of information on this one frustrating to say the least. She clicked on several more of the articles, but each one said basically the same thing. There was one dated a few days after the crash that said while the intersection had cameras police were unable to recover anything from them due to some sort of malfunction.

There was also no mention of specifics of what kind of car it was that hit her. It was possible that the witness never got a good look at it.

She saw a link to an obituary, but she couldn’t bring herself to click on it. She wasn’t ready for that.

God, she thought, this must have devastated Eliza and Kara.

Getting up, she began to pace a bit, trying to hold the emotions she was feeling at bay. Alex was dead. She had died and Maggie hadn’t even remembered it. How could she not remember it? Surely, when it happened she must have felt loss just as painful as she was feeling it right now.

She wanted to crawl into her bed and cry, cry for what she had lost, but the questions she had about all of it kept her from breaking down.

Had she even gone to the funeral, she wondered.

Thoughts of Alex and their time together had been running through her mind on an almost endless loop since she had woken up. The moment they met, Alex kissing her, her kissing Alex, Alex asking her to marry her, it all kept coming.

The only thing she wanted to do right now was climb into bed, close her eyes and hope when she woke up she would find this was only a nightmare.

But she had more to research.

Her next Google search was for Supergirl.

There were a lot more articles pertaining to her, but Maggie sorted them from earliest to latest so she could see a progression of what happened. The first odd article about Supergirl came about two weeks after Alex’s death and it was what appeared to be a routine robbery at a gas station, but Supergirl had shown up and stopped by the man by breaking his arm – it was a radial fracture meaning she had twisted it.

There were more articles like this where Supergirl was being violent in stopping crime. There were articles about city officials expressing their concerns about her actions and finally denouncing her entirely.

Maggie clicked on a video from a news broadcast about a hostage situation where Supergirl had interceded once more – this time killing the hostage taker. Instead of flying off, Supergirl walked straight over to the news cameras. Everything about her, from the way she walked to the way she was handling herself, was wrong in Maggie’s eyes. Gone was that smile and bright-eyed look. It was replaced with what Maggie could only describe as darkness.

“Listen up people of National City,” Supergirl said. “From this day forward if you commit a crime in my city be prepared to face real consequences. Too long have you humans been lax in punishing those who do wrong. You give them probation or parole them after a few years, but that doesn’t help anything as they just go back to committing atrocities. No more. You want to live in my city then you better be the ideal citizen. And for all of those who dare to cross me or think I won’t find you, well, I will string your dead bodies up for all the world to see.”

After that she flew off and Maggie turned off the video, not wanting to see anymore of it.

Kara had gone insane. That was the only explanation that Maggie could come up with for her actions. And the timing of it, it couldn’t be a coincidence that it happened shortly after Alex’s death.

But why didn’t the DEO shut Kara down before it got this far?

It’s not like she could Google the DEO as no one knew they existed. Still, she couldn’t see J’onn sitting back and not doing something to stop her.

Maggie kept reading article after article. The governor had called out the National Guard to stop her, but of course they were useless against her. There were public pleas for her to stop her reign of terror on the city. Meanwhile, an unofficial curfew went into effect as it appeared people were too afraid to be out and risk her wrath. People were also leaving the city in droves.

Finally, Superman stepped in.

She watched footage of their battle and the destruction it caused. Superman had managed to knock Kara out and then he picked up her limp body and flew off.

There were several articles conjecturing where he might have taken her, including taking her from the planet entirely. Since it happened Superman himself had been scarce.

Maggie wasn’t even sure how long she had sat there reading all the articles, but when she stood up again she was stiff from sitting so long.

No wonder she couldn’t remember anything, she thought, everything she had forgotten was clearly not good. Maybe her mind didn’t want to remember it.

Still, there was a lot about this that was bothering her, mostly how anyone had let it get this far. But those answers wouldn’t be found in Gotham.


	4. Chapter 4

Maggie parked the rental car and sat there in it for several minutes. Now that she was in National City she was beginning to question why she was here. Before leaving Gotham, she had a long talk with Jackson that didn’t make her feel any better about the life she couldn’t remember.

It had started when Jackson came over to drop off Gertrude. Maggie had immediately asked him to keep her for a few more days as she was going to National City. Jackson had questioned that decision and then gave her some more insight into what she had forgotten and it had shaken her up to say the least.

“I get it, you’re upset about Alex, but going there it doesn’t change anything. You’re just going to get more upset because to you it’s like this just happened.”

“I have to go,” she replied. “I just need to get all of this straight in my head. Tell me, did I even go to her funeral?”

Jackson shook his head no. “You wanted to, but you didn’t think it was a good idea at the time.”

Maggie had finally read the obituary and knew that Alex had been buried in Midvale. Her thoughts went to Eliza. To lose Jeremiah and then Alex and finally Kara, she couldn’t even imagine what she must be going through. She had even thought about calling her, but she didn’t know what to say.

“Look this is just something I have to do,” Maggie said.

“I just think you should stay here and lay low for a bit. You are on leave as it is due to the explosion and the memory loss.”

There was something about how he said lay low that bothered her.

“Is there something going on that I need to know about?”

The moment he hesitated she knew something was up.

“If there is something I need to know, some reason I shouldn’t be going to National City that I can’t remember then spill it.”

“Maybe we should sit down for this.”

They took seats at the kitchen table. Gertrude was camped out at her feet and Maggie bent down to pet her for a moment.

“Going to National City now will raise suspicions from the wrong people,” he said. “Even before the explosion IA was sniffing around about you and now, well now just isn’t the time to disappear for a few days.”

“Why would internal affairs be looking into me?”

“Because they suspect you have been using your position to steal alien technology.”

Maggie laughed, “that is ridiculous. Where would they get an idea like that?”

“One of the busts we made, the guy rolled over and told them that you had been shaking down the tech smugglers,” Jackson said. “IA found it credible enough that they started asking questions. You’ve been pulled in several times for interviews with them as have I since I’m your partner. Then this shit with the warehouse, I really think you should just stay here and relax for a few days and maybe it will all blow over.”

“There is nothing to blow over,” Maggie said. “I sure as hell haven’t been stealing alien tech.”

“But Maggie, you have been.”

At first Maggie wasn’t sure she had heard him right. Once her mind did process it, she was out of her chair. “What kind of bullshit is this? Are you trying to set me up or play some cruel joke because I can’t remember? You have two seconds to explain yourself or my next call will be to IA about you.”

“Save the self-righteous act,” Jackson said also standing. “Do you think I have enjoyed covering for you? You really messed up with this explosion.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You were afraid that if the raid was successful you would get caught, so you were the one who tipped off the smugglers. They knew we were coming and detonated the place. You are damn lucky you were the only one with more than minor injuries,” Jackson said. “I told you before I was done with all of this and I meant it. You want to ruin your career go ahead but leave mine alone.”

Maggie could tell by the way he was speaking to her that he was not fooling around, but there was no way she would ever be involved in something like this. It wasn’t possible.

“If what you say is true and believe me that is a big if, why don’t you explain why I would be involved in anything like this?”

“Because of Alex,” Jackson said, as if it was the most obvious answer. “When she died you became obsessed with finding some way to bring her back. You believed with all the alien tech on the planet there must be something you could get your hands on that would let you bring her back.”

Maggie sat back down, her mind unable to process any of this. Was this possible? Had Alex’s death had this much affect on her that she would break the law? No, it wasn’t possible, she decided. As much as she loved Alex, she would never do anything like this.

“I don’t suppose you can prove any of this?” she said finally.

“You want to go to National City, I won’t stop you,” he said. “I’ll even watch Gertrude for you, but before you go do me one favor. Go to 1214 Pioneer Drive.”

“What is there?”

“It’s an old house that you procured under means I don’t even want to know about. You will find your answers in the basement,” Jackson said. “The keys you will need should be on your key ring. And there is a keypad next to the door to the basement to unlock. The code is the date of when Alex asked you to marry her. IA doesn’t know about it so watch your back in going there.”

“What will I find there?” Maggie asked, already weirded out about this.

“Like I said answers. I don’t know who you were in 2017, but something tells me it is a far cry from who you are now.”

Jackson picked up Gertrude and left without another word, leaving Maggie alone with her thoughts. She wasn’t a dirty cop of that she was sure but the confidence with which Jackson spoke had her questioning everything.

She didn’t have any idea where Pioneer Drive was or what to expect when she got there but she knew she had to go before heading to National City.

…

After figuring out where she was going, she had an Uber drop her off a couple of blocks away, so she could see if she was being followed by anyone. Even if she didn’t believe she was a dirty cop, she knew that IA could be relentless once they found a target. She walked the rest of the way keeping an eye out for any one that might be paying her any special attention.

When she made it to her destination, she still waited outside for nearly 10 minutes casing out the place. For all she knew, this was a set up. One of the things she had thought about was Jackson. While she didn’t think he was sinister in anyway – at least not that she would tell – she wasn’t sure she could trust him.

Finally, she determined that it was safe and she went up to the house – finding the right key and getting in. Locking the door behind her, she began looking around. The house had a couch and pretty much nothing else except for cameras. She got worried she was being recorded but decided to keep going. When she found the basement door, she was struck by the fact it was a steel door. Whatever was behind that door someone was serious about protecting it.

Using the keypad first she inputted the code and heard something unlock and then she used the biggest key she had to unlock the other part. Pulling the door open, she found the light switch just inside and walked down. There was another light switch at the bottom of the stairs which she turned on and her eyes immediately narrowed at the scene around her. There was alien tech all around the room – what appeared to be weapons and devices that she had no idea what they were for.

Impossible, she thought.

Walking over to what looked like a work bench, she saw various pieces scatter like someone had been working on something.

Moving around she noticed several guns on another table -all the same type- and she picked one up recognizing it as the same kind of alien gun that Alex had used. It appeared to be in working order although she wasn’t going to test that theory.

She continued to walk around examining items and wondering what they were for. Whoever had gathered this stuff together did not do it quickly she was guessing. There was a lot here, but it didn’t prove she was involved in any way.

Right now, she was thinking of going straight to IA and tell them about this place, but even that was a foolish thought. She had the keys to this place and no explanation for why.

There were two smaller rooms off of this one – the first being a bathroom. She entered the next, turning on the light, and finding a sofa that had seen better days, a coffee table and a laptop. Sitting down she opened the computer and turned it on. A password pane greeted her. Great, she thought, my computer at home isn’t protected but this one was. She thought about taking it with her and when she got to National City maybe Winn to help her with it.

Still she paused. First, she tried the same date that unlocked the door but that password didn’t work. Next, she tried the date she was supposed to have gotten married. Then it was the date of Alex giving her a kiss, then the date of her kissing Alex. None of it worked.

She sat back on the couch thinking that this was a waste of time. Jackson had put it in her head that she was connected to this place, but nothing about it felt familiar. Sighing, she was about to shut the computer down and get to National City when she decided to try one last password – AlexDanvers.

The moment she hit enter, the computer gave her access.

“Shit,” she said out loud.

Once it came on fully, she was confronted with a desktop with nearly two dozen folders. Clicking on the first one, she saw it was full of pictures of a piece of the tech that was probably sitting in the other room and typed out notes about what it was and where it came from. Going through more than a dozen of the folders she found the same types of documents. The one that had pictures of the guns like Alex had even noted how Alex had gotten hers.

With each folder she thought about how stupid it was to document any of this. IA would have field day if they got a hold of this computer. It had names, dates, times of transactions and shipment schedules. And now it had her fingerprints all over it. She really hadn’t thought all of this through.

As she got to the last folder, she saw it was a video file, dated the night before the warehouse explosion, so she clicked on it.

When her face appeared on the screen and started talking she nearly shut it off, but as it was the volume wasn’t up so she had to turn it up and restart the video.

“If everything goes as planned then this video won’t matter,” Maggie said. “But if it doesn’t, well if I don’t succeed none of it matters anyway. I’m not even sure why I’m recording this except that if I fail, I want someone to know that all I have done, it was never my intention. I just … I just had to do something to try and get her back. I want the life I should have had with Alex. I want to wake up beside her, I want to go play pool with her or take a weekend trip just the two of us. I want us to finally say, ‘I do.’ And I want to tell her how angry I was when she broke things off, but how I started to understand why she did it. I wanted to speak to her before … before someone killed her, but I was too afraid to pick up the phone and call. I was afraid she had moved on and found someone that could give her the life she wanted, the life I rejected. Then she was dead and I knew what it was like to lose my whole world. But I had to get her back, that’s why I’ve done all of this. I hope no one ever gets to watch this, because it would mean I succeeded and I have Alex back in my life. For that I would do anything.”

The video stopped and Maggie played it over again and then one more time. It was definitely her.

She had absolutely no memory of it though.

Jackson was right, she had done these things to get Alex back, but what had been her plan? Nothing in what she read about the alien technology had given her any clue that any of it would be able to bring her back to life.

And what about the timing of all of this? Was she going to execute her plan but hadn’t because of the raid on the warehouse? Was she trying to cover her tracks, is that why the place exploded? Maybe she hadn’t even started the plan because she could no longer remember what it was that she was going to do.

This place hadn’t brought her answers, it had brought her more questions.


	5. Chapter 5

After leaving the house, Maggie had made her way to National City – taking the laptop she had found with her along with one of the alien guns which looked like Alex’s. She wasn’t sure why she took the risk in taking it except that she felt more secure being armed.

Now here she was back home – or at least what she thought had been her home when she had woken in that hospital. Yet, she found she was reluctant to leave the rental car because of where she had driven to upon getting here. She was parked just down from the intersection where Alex had been killed.

Even as she was coming to grips with the idea that Alex was dead, the idea that she had died in such a mundane way was almost unfathomable to her. Alex risked her life every time she went out on a mission but to just be driving on a street and then one moment it’s all over.

She waited several more minutes before she worked up the courage to get out of the car and walk down to the intersection. Stopping on the corner, she stared at the spot where it happened. There was nothing there to indicate anything had ever happened there, not that she expected there to be, but still the nothingness bothered her.

Even Alex’s obit had bothered her. She understood that they couldn’t exactly say she was an agent for a secret government agency, but she wanted people to know that Alex had helped saved the world on multiple occasions.

She didn’t stay there long – she couldn’t - - and she made her way to her next destination – the DEO.

Arriving at the DEO headquarters, she immediately saw that coming here was a waste as the building was gone – as in completely gone. There was some construction going on there and a sign that said it was going to be a new parking garage.

What the hell, she thought. How many things could possibly change in two years?

Getting back in her car, she thought about going to the NCPD. Surely, she still had enough of a reputation there that someone would let her look at the file on Alex’s death. It was still an unsolved case so it’s not like she could make a public records request or anything. She wanted to read it and maybe speak with the investigating officer to see if there were any leads they were following.

But the idea that the DEO wasn’t there bothered her so she decided to take a drive out to the desert base to see if it was still active. She could always hit the NCPD later.

The entire drive out to the base, she thought about that house in Gotham and all it contained. If she had been collected alien tech to try and find a way to bring Alex back, why were there also so many weapons? Then again, she was doing something highly illegal so maybe it was more for protection than anything else.

As she was nearing the base, she again saw that something was wrong. There was no security post, no vehicles – nothing. She parked her car and got out, approaching the entrance. The intercom and security pad were both not powered up so she couldn’t even attempt to contact anyone.

“Damn it,” she swore, hitting the door with her hand. Now what would she do? The DEO either had a new headquarters or had left National City for good. Maybe with Supergirl out of commission they found they were no longer needed here? Either way, she had met a dead end. Time to hit the NCPD, she thought as she walked back to her car.

As she moved, she heard the sound of the doors opening behind her. Stopping, she looked first to see if it was indeed the doors opening and it was. But there was no light or anything, just darkness down there.

“Hello?” she called out as she reached the entrance. No answer.

Someone must be there though, she thought. And she needed answers so she walked in.

Maggie continued to call out for anyone as she made her way down to where the command center was, where she was greeted with only emergency lighting. The banks of monitors and computers were dark and there was no one there.

“What are you doing here?” came a computerized voice. It appeared to be pumped through a sound system, not something in that room.

“I’m looking for J’onn,” she called out.

“Why?”

“If J’onn is here, I will tell him,” she responded. She didn’t like the idea of speaking to some nebulous voice when she had no idea who this person was or if they were even affiliated with the DEO. Like everything else since she woke up, this just felt wrong.

“Tell me why you are here detective.”

“Detective? So, you know who I am?”

“Detective Maggie Sawyer, Gotham City Police Department. There is just one problem, this isn’t Gotham and you have no business here.”

“Fine,” she said, turning around. “I’ll leave since you apparently can’t help me.”

The door to the command center shut however, keeping her from leaving.

“Look, whoever you are, you can let me leave peacefully or I don’t care if I have to rip this place apart, I will find you and then you will answer my questions with this pointed at your face,” she said pulling out the alien gun from where it had been holstered under her jacket.

“Where did you get Alex’s gun?” the voice said.

Alex, whoever this person was, they must be familiar enough with Alex to know she had a gun like this, Maggie thought.

“Is J’onn here or not?” she asked. “I need to speak to him, it’s about Alex.”

The voice didn’t answer.

“Please,” she said. “I need to speak to him.”

“Maggie.”

She turned at the sound of a very human voice to her left as doors opened. A person in a wheelchair came rolling down a ramp.

“Winn?” she said, once he was in the light.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Why are you asking for J’onn and what does this have to do with Alex?”

“Wait, was that you with the computer voice?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m the only one here.”

“What are you doing in a wheelchair? What’s going on here? Where is everyone?”

“Those are a lot of questions coming from a detective who is close to being a former detective if the GCPD ever finds out what you are up to,” he said.

“You know?”

“There is very little I don’t know or at least don’t have the means to find out,” he said. “It’s not like I needed my legs to do the kind of work I have always excelled at. The cyber world is easier to navigate than the one out there, especially now.”

“So, you are still working for the DEO? Out here alone?”

He gave her a quizzical look, “no, the DEO was disbanded. I work alone now, well not technically alone. I use my computer skills to track down information, to find the threads of crime and I feed them to various operatives who do the leg work. They call me Oracle.”

…

Maggie settled down in the chair after Winn let her back to what he called his command center. It was a smaller room that had nearly as many screens and monitors as the one out in main center.

“When I first started tracking down the stolen alien tech in Gotham I had no idea your name was going to pop up,” Winn was saying. “You’ve been lucky so far but let me warn you now that you need to stop. Even if you can keep the GCPD from finding out, at some point, I will need to send one of my operatives to intervene. Batwoman in particular has asked about the case and she is not an easy one to hold off.”

“Who is Batwoman?”

“Doesn’t matter, my point is you have to stop this.”

“It’s stopped,” Maggie said. “The moment I found out about it, it stopped. Look Winn, I woke up in the hospital a few days ago and my entire world got turned upside down. I woke thinking it was 2017. I woke to find out that not only had Alex and I broken up, but she was dead and that Kara, well, I still don’t understand exactly what happened there. But believe me when I tell you that when I found out I had been involved in stealing alien tech, I don’t care what my reasonings were at the time, it’s over.”

“Why were you doing it?”

“I don’t know, like I said I don’t remember, but apparently I thought I could find some alien tech that could bring Alex back.”

“It all changed when she died,” Winn said and Maggie didn’t miss the look he gave his own legs.

“Winn, what happened here? I’ve read some stuff online but I need answers, that is why I came here.”

“None of this would have happened if Alex hadn’t died,” Winn said. “But I don’t think any of us could have predicted how Kara would react to it. She couldn’t accept it. Especially the way Alex died. Someone hit her and then they drove off. They got away with it and that bothered Kara, got stuck in her brain that people shouldn’t get away with … well with anything.”

“And they never caught the person that killed her?”

“The authorities never did.”

The way he phrased it didn’t escape her notice. “But someone did?”

Winn nodded, “Kara did.”

Maggie didn’t want to ask but she had to. “What did she do with the person who did this?”

“People, there three guys in the car that night,” Winn said. “They were all drunk and they gave no thought to stopping and checking on her. They might have gotten away with it to if … if I hadn’t used my skills to track them down.”

“Whatever happened it’s not your fault,” Maggie said.

She could tell that Winn didn’t believe that. The smile he used to flash was no longer there.

“Their mistake was the cameras,” Winn said. “One of the guys, Adam Dickerson, he was in IT – good but not good enough to completely erase his tracks when he hacked into the traffic cameras to delete the footage. I found him first and I told J’onn and Kara. J’onn told me to turn the information over to the police but Kara argued with him that the cops shouldn’t be involved because Alex was a DEO employee so we should handle it. J’onn tried to get her to understand why it wasn’t our jurisdiction but she wouldn’t listen. We should have known then that she wasn’t going to let it go.”

“I passed on the information like J’onn instructed, but by the time the police confirmed everything and got a warrant the man had disappeared,” he continued. “I think J’onn suspected Kara had done something the moment we learned about it.”

Maggie felt her heart beat a little quicker in anticipation of what she knew must be coming.

“They didn’t find his body for awhile. I think at that point Kara was maybe still trying to turn from the path she was going on or maybe she felt guilt over it. I don’t know, maybe she didn’t care or was incapable of it in the wake of Alex’s death,” Winn said. “Maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part that Kara could be saved.”

Winn paused and Maggie tried to respect what he must be feeling but she needed to know.

“How did she do it?”

“His neck was broke,” Winn replied. “But there was other evidence like broken bones that suggested she tortured him first probably to get the information on the other two men.”

“Why didn’t J’onn try and stop her at that point?”

“We had no proof it was actually her. The police were investigating his death and of course we suspected but when J’onn asked her about it she denied knowing anything. Still, J’onn suspended her while we looked into it. She didn’t even seem to care. J’onn asked me to track her so we would know where she was going because at this point we didn’t know of the others involved,” Winn said. “Most nights she ended up at the same place – the intersection where Alex was killed.”

Having gone there earlier – feeling the need to see it, Maggie wasn’t surprised to hear this.

“It was more than a week before she went somewhere strange – a residential area in the suburbs.  She wasn’t there long but I let J’onn know. Two days later there was a police report about a missing man – his name was Daniel Burton, and he disappeared from that same suburb area that Kara had been at. He had gone outside to smoke a cigarette and never came back inside. His wife reported him missing. The cops seemed to think he might have taken off although how they thought he did that, I have no idea,” Winn said. “They never found his body.”

“Wait,” Maggie said. “How do you all know that Kara was involved in any of this then?”

“She told us,” Winn whispered.

Maggie got out her seat – this was more heavy than she was expecting. “Did she confess this before or after her battle with Superman?”

“Before,” he responded. “Superman was a last resort. He had tried to intervene earlier but J’onn asked him to let us handle it if we could. J’onn knew that if Superman interceded that there would be a battle and he was trying to avoid it but after Kara destroyed the DEO headquarters we didn’t have much choice.”

“So that is what happened. I drove there first after …”

“After you went to the intersection?”

Maggie nodded.

“J’onn had brought Kara back in after another man went missing – Frank Dean. He was a friend of Daniel Burton and Adam Dickerson. He was also the man who was driving that night.”

Frank Dean, Maggie thought. The name meant nothing to her beyond now knowing it was the man who killed Alex. He and his friends had gotten drunk, went driving, hit her and never stopped. Would it have mattered if they had? Would she still be dead?

“Kara didn’t bother lying or anything when J’onn questioned her. She actually sat there smiling as she told us how she had gotten Daniel’s and Frank’s name from Adam. Adam had confessed that after it had happened he had hacked the traffic cameras – erased the footage of it but not without making a back up copy on a flash drive. He said he did it just in case he needed it for leverage of some sort. He told Kara where it was and the names of other two, thinking she would let him go.”

 “Instead all she told him was that he earned a quick death,” Winn continued. “Then she snapped his neck. She wanted his body to be found she said. She wanted the other two to be worried that maybe, just maybe someone knew what they had done. She wanted them to know that justice would be coming.”

“Justice, is that how she saw it?”

“Make no mistake, that is exactly how she saw it. She said they deserved to die for Alex’s death,” Winn said. “She said that was the problem with this world, that we let people get away with anything. Even if the authorities would have caught these men, she said, they would have gotten a slap on the wrist instead of getting what justice demanded. That is when she told us that those days were over and that since she had the power, she was going to use it.”

“Surely J’onn did something to stop her right then and there.”

“He did,” Winn said, looking down at his wheelchair. “And she brought the building down on top of him for trying to stop her. Most everyone got out while they were fighting. I wasn’t so lucky.”

“I’m so sorry Winn,” Maggie said, sitting back down. “I’m sorry this happened.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault but Kara’s,” he said. “She changed in an instant. Everything she stood for, everything she believed in, she threw it all it away when Alex died.”

“Apparently so did I,” Maggie said.

“You really don’t remember any of this, do you?”

“No. All of it is a complete blank.”

“I can’t blame your mind for wanting to go back to the good days,” Winn said. “I would go back too if I could. Back when Alex was alive, you two were together and Kara … Kara was the hope this city needed.”

“What happened to J’onn and the DEO, why exactly was it disbanded, and why, why are you hiding out here?”

“Jeez Maggie, thinking of changing careers to become The Question?”

“The Question?”

“A lone wolf type, former detective, she is good at what she does, but she likes to say that every question leads to another question.”

“I’ve had no shortage of those since I woke up. I truly don’t understand how all of this got to be like this,” Maggie said. “Alex … Alex meant the world to me, but how could I do what I’ve done. How could I turn my back on what I believe in as a cop? And I don’t know even know what I was thinking – how could I possibly bring her back. I mean this laptop I found, I wasn’t confused by half of the stuff on it because it seemed like I was collecting more weapons than any kind of tech that could do the impossible.”

“Laptop?”

“Yes I found a laptop in this house in Gotham that I was apparently using to hide the alien tech. I don’t see how any of it would be useful in bringing Alex back.”

“You don’t happen to have it with you do you?”

Maggie nodded.

“Go get it and I’ll see if I can decipher anything.”

Maggie returned to her car and grabbed the laptop, hoping that Winn would indeed find something, anything that would be helpful. At this point Maggie wasn’t even sure what she was looking for. What did it matter what her plan had been? She clearly either hadn’t done it or had been unsuccessful.

There was still so much about this that was bothering her.

When she returned to Winn, she handed over the computer and password.

“Do you want some pizza?” Winn asked.

“Sure,” Maggie said, taking a seat.

“I like that place on Central Avenue,” Winn said.

“Ok, then,” Maggie responded. “I guess, I’ll go get some then.”

Winn was already opening the laptop as she stood up. “Any preferences on toppings?”

“I’m sure whatever you pick up will be fine,” he said, waving her off.


End file.
